The 40 poems in Inner Immigrant are a retrospective.
Writing about the past can be hard just as with knowledge there is, what you know, what you don’t know and what you think you know. I feel the past is the same. There’s a sting of naïveté, which is some concoction of innocence and ignorance that feels shameful sometimes. Inner Immigrant is a retrospective, a look back on times past but the content is still relevant. This is not a lament. It’s not some longing to linger in nostalgia, but to display, comment and catalyze conversation on the themes and associations that express themselves through the poems.
I would really like to create some conversation series relevant to the topics explored in this book. Although these poems are snapshot of my inner life, they are all rooted in real-life social experiences. The poems stands alone as lived experiences but also a proxy. Seamus Heaney said it better maybe,
I have a little brother, nephews and nieces, cousins, family and friends who have navigated paths I’ve taken, are on similar journeys, or may possibly face similar situations in their future. The poet is a weird creature, we tend to have mechanisms of self-exile in order to observe ourselves and the life that moves around us and moves us forward. I can’t stress enough how much this book and these poems are self-contained explorations as well as a complete hike through the landscape of mind, heart and experience transformed into art.
This book is also important because it is me fulfilling an obligation to myself, albeit an earlier version. The book is honoring my lived experience and knowing that my lived experiences are bookmarks and sometimes a guide forward.
I’ll close with these words from former President Obama in Dreams from my Father,
“…I strongly resisted resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed. Not because that past is particularly painful or perverse but because it speaks to those aspects of myself that resist conscious choice and that — on the surface, at least contradict the world I now occupy.”
Have you constructively visited the past and given others access to the value of your lived experiences?
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